There and back again

I knew that I had been in Amsterdam too long when I mistook a bunch of tulips rolled in paper for the biggest joint that I had seen that weekend. Or it might have been when looking in windows that didn't have half naked women in them started to feel odd. Either way, it was Ok to be going home on Sunday.

Of course, the other teachers didn't really know what to think when I told them that I was going away with my students for the whole weekend! They looked confused for a moment before moving onto disbelief and finishing with calling me a geek. But students are a bit like real people actually, they have their own personalities and everything.

That is not to say that I didn't have my own concerns- what if they all spoke Porteguese all weekend, even the French girl, would my paranoia get the better of me? What if they wanted to party like it was 1999 when all I wanted to do was tuck myself up in the hostel with a nice cup of horlicks.

Then I remembered that I had never even drunk horlicks so that was unlikely.



We took the long and involved route of a train to Harwich, ferry over the water and a train from the Hook of Holland straight into Amsterdam Central Station.

Hadn't really counted on the stag parties from Essex and the 18th birthday party from Suffolk joining us on our journey. Ah well, the students are always saying that they never seen any English people in London- they were about to see them in their natural environment.

And they were pretty gobsmacked at the amount of English spoken in the 'dam- by the Dutch people and all the English speaking tourists- they decided that it would be a much better place for them to study than multi-lingual London.

They seemed pretty shocked when we got the hostel- turns out that three of them were hostel virgins and one in the centre of Amsterdam is not the easiest first hostel- it was all a little overwhelming for them and strangely comforting for me. I guess that the main difference was that it was a step down in the world for those that usually sleep in a bed and a step up for those of us (me) who sleep on an air mattress on the floor.

In actual fact, the weekend was nice quiet one really. No major partying or happenings- apart from one student bugging me the whole time as if I should know as much about the rest of the world as I do about English grammar (not much, admittedly) and asking me what the time was in London all the time.

Friday night, coffee shop and bar. Sightseeing Saturday- and souvenir shopping of course. Me and Perrine spent a happy few minutes planning the weekend using these fridge magnets- until her boyfriend, Gustavo, put a stop to our fun.

Saturday night we had cheese and wine in the hostel before settling in for a well-earned nap which we only woke up from at 11pm! Oops, then more coffee shops, stroll through the red light district to laugh at the ugly hookers and bars before bed around 4.

Sunday, last minute shopping and aimless wandering before getting the train back to London.

A great weekend and one that I would gladly do again- only this time we will go to Belfast so we can take the Colombian with us with a minimum of visa hassles.